CoL49 group reading ch4 - time indications

[Michael Bailey]

I keep putting “group reading” in the subject line most of the time because
I liked JK’s instantiation of this novel nomenclature - and it might make
it easier to find in upcoming years (presuming anyone nutty enough to be
looking for this group read (-; )


After the Yoyodyne meeting, we get:


1) jumping ahead “a few days later” - talking to Mike Fallopian in The
Scope, “Metzger, who’d come along that evening“ also there, perhaps to
argue with Fallopian

2) reaching back, “there had been” - the historical marker on the other
side of the lake, whereupon she called Driblette but no answer, and went to
Zapf’s, and then back to Echo Court to look at texts

3) “the next day” (after the historical marker, but still before The Scope,
then) she goes to Vesperhaven

4) no time indication, but probably soon after, & therefore before the
Scope visit with Metzger, she has another conversation with Mike Fallopian
on her own (at least, no sign of Metzger in the text during this one),
finding out how little he knows about the Tristero

5) then, “One rainy morning, with mist rising off the pool, Metzger again
away, the Paranoids off somewhere to a recording session, Oedipa got rung
up by this Genghis Cohen, who even over the phone she could tell was
disturbed”


It seems that
1) with Fallopian and Merzger in the Scope is a landmark of sorts

2) from which we jump back to 2, 3, 4, and 5, which occur in succession

- and then, it seems we skip back past that evening in The Scope to the
starting point of the sequence of events leading to, and including, the
meeting with Cohen (to whom Metzger had, a week earlier than that, ferried
the stamps in Oedipa’s rented Impala -

horrible liability problem potential in the event of an accident, not to
mention loss/theft/damage of the stamps, unless they had put him as a
driver
(But I digress))


Why put The Scope out of order & flash back from that?

- at that textually earlier (but narratively, pretty firmly later) meeting,
what Fallopian is “on about” is what a hellhole working for a company is,
when teamwork is expected, and how that makes the individualists recognize
each other & stick together (ironic Pig Bodine laugh, hyeugh, hyeugh,
hyeugh)

- Oedipa doesn’t nudge him towards her interest, The Tristero, why? Because
in the textually later (but narratively earlier) meeting with him, she’s
already learned how little he knows.

- Why does she even bother to go back there? I think she likes him a
little, with his drip-dry suit, his “slender build and neat Armenian nose,
and a certain affinity of his eyes for green neon.” Plus maybe she digs the
music, and a lady enjoys a libation at times.

- so like, “oh let me tell you about that night at the Scope when Mike
Fallopian and Metzger had an argument apparently having nothing to do with
the Tristero, but “Oedipa sat alone and gloomy. She’d decided to come
tonight to The Scope not only because of the encounter with Stanley Koteks,
but also because of other revelations; because it seemed that a pattern was
beginning to emerge, having to do with the mail and how it was delivered.””

- “you will want cause and effect”: what were these revelations and how did
she receive them? Thus the flashbacks, imho.

This is Oedipa’s brain on The Tristero; this is Metzger and Fallopian going
off in an uninteresting quarrel, both uninterested in her preoccupation.